AT&T Readying For the End of Analog Landlines 426
nottheusualsuspect writes "AT&T, in response to a Notice of Inquiry released by the FCC to explore how to transition to a purely IP-based communications network, has declared that it's time to cut the cord. AT&T told the FCC that the death of landlines is a matter of when, not if, and asked that a firm deadline be set for pulling the plug. In the article, broadband internet and cellular access are considered to be available to everyone, though many Americans are still without decent internet access."
VOIP sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I had a reliable VOIP service, I would be happy, but the most reliable thing is POTS. It's simple and it works. I know some people that are just VOIP or just cell phone, but neither is reliable enough to replace my dedicated line - I've tried it, twice, and its just not enough. Plus land lines are dirt cheap.
Majority (Score:1, Insightful)
Fantasies... (Score:5, Insightful)
Aaah! The delicate irreality of think-tank fueled corporate musings that are mostly thinly veiled attempts at doing away with current regulation and obstacles to pure profitability
One step at a time AT&T (Score:2, Insightful)
Speaking of handling loads, how are you doing with the barrage of iPhone users?
Before you all jump on me, I am a happy AT&T customer. I am just being bluntly honest.
Of course AT&T wants landlines cut.... (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as AT&T is concerned though, I have them, and my calls drop at my house all the time in a city of around a million people. Screw them, course it's not just them, Verizon and Cricket both dropped calls at my house too. A-holes, all of em. Each one of them should change their slogan to "Providing the least amount of service possible to as many people as we can dupe for the most amount of money that the market will bear."
Now THATS a true company mission statement if ever I heard one...
Never sacrifice proven infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)
Isnt it ironic ? they are the ones withholding (Score:4, Insightful)
decent internet access from many people because it is unprofitable for them to deliver, while still holding on to their granted monopolies in those areas. and then they even go to the extent of saying that they want to cut the landline cords. this basically means a lot of people will not only be without decent internet access, but also decent phone communication. unbelievable bastardiness.
yet, if, any government agency would, god forbid, to step in to eliminate this blatant slighting of citizens, those bastards all start up yelling 'competition' , 'hands off business', 'no government intervention', 'socialism'.
maybe socialism is indeed what is needed. for, apparently, what we have on our hands became an outright feudalism.
Re:VOIP sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Does your internet and VOIP work when the power goes out?
Pick up that POTS phone...hey look, still working. (Assuming the exchange hasn't been taken out, but if that's the case there's likely bigger problems than a local outage.)
Re:VOIP sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you sure your kids will ever be able to use cell phone or VOIP reliably when the power is out and/or injured to the point of being unable to speek or under duress and told not to?
silver lining (Score:2, Insightful)
All of the valid points/problems in the previous comments aside, at least this would finally put an end to fax machines, eh?
If AT&T wants that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Some other roadblocks (Score:5, Insightful)
I've used VOIP for years at both my business and my house - but we still have a landline. Just a few other roadblocks we ran into that weren't mentioned:
I love the flexibility I get with VOIP, I can work from anywhere with a decent internet connection and have all kinds of routing options through my Asterisk server, but we still have our incoming calls defaulting to a POTS line that runs into the Asterisk box. VOIP is constantly gaining ground but it's not there yet.
Re:Majority (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:VOIP sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
who can't get IP?
People in rural areas. I can get an analog telephone line at my home (but I didn't bother; I use my cell phone), but cannot get DSL or ISDN because the telephone switch is too far away. There's no cable TV in the area. There are a couple of WiFi-based ISPs that serve the area, but they're really bad. Satellite is an option for those who don't mind the latency. I'm left with using a cellular modem for my internet connection out here, and even with an outdoor antenna, it's pretty crappy. I'd consider reliable 128k ISDN to be an upgrade. Oh, and if I did bother to have a POTS line out here and tried dial-up, I'd be able to get about 28k on a good day, and less if it's rained recently. My cell phone service out here is kinda spotty, but I still don't bother with a POTS line because I don't use the phone too much and I don't feel like paying yet another phone bill.
Now, if cutting the analog cord meant that the telephone providers would be required by law to build out their digital capabilities to anybody within their previous POTS coverage areas, then that would be great for folks who haven't had any good broadband options so far.
Re:Majority (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, they will not be very confused if AT&T just comes and replaces their local exchange with a version that still serves the same wiring in their homes with the same phone numbers, but handles outbound communication through Internet.
Re:VOIP sucks. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sooner or later (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is one of market share and costs. At some point, the costs of maintaining POTS will exceed the revenue produced by it. When that happens, or maybe a little before, POTS is dead. It really doesn't matter if not everyone has switched over or not, it will just be terminated.
That is the reason they want an announced-by-the-government date, as it would eliminate the carrier from being the bad guy.
The problem is today end-user vVOIP has no tariffs that require reliability. If Vonage service goes out, so what? Because of the number of hands it has to go through, it is unlikely we are going to see much mandated reliability for VOIP service anytime soon. This means that your "landline" phone is not going to have anywhere near the reliability that POTS service has today, and there will be no regulation that says it has to be.
All in all, this sounds like an interesting, but utterly useless idea. But unless something is done about pseudo-carriers like Vonage and Magic Jack POTS service is doomed.
and it's really annoying when people (Score:1, Insightful)
start a conversation in the subject only to finish it in the body of the comment.
Knock it off.
Re:VOIP sucks. (Score:4, Insightful)
So yes, the answer is that real, usable IP is out of reach for many of us.
And this is why VoIP and TVoIP aren't going to make POTS and cable systems obsolete in the near future.
It's a real shame that the US doesn't believe in investing in infrastructure. We'll let our bridges collapse, our streets be filled with potholes, our electrical grid take out 1/4 of the country in one blackout, we'll live without a decent railway system, and we'll let our Internet access fall behind the rest of the world. We'll do it all because public infrastructure is "communist".
The truth is, POTS should be obsolete. You have problems with VoIP? Well that's just a sign that VoIP should be improved, made better, fixed. Name a problem with VoIP, and there are people who will find a solution, assuming we're willing to invest in infrastructure. You think POTS grew out of the ground on its own, fully formed and without problems?
Re:Majority (Score:3, Insightful)
The world hasn't ended, but for a lot of people I know TV has ended.
Almost all of the ones I know who were affected live in rural areas, and many are older and with fixed incomes. For a lot of them, the TV is pretty much their only source of up-to-date information like news and weather, and they were OK with a grainy picture and a massive rooftop antenna. But that's all over now. They blew their $20-30 on converter boxes and ended up with nothing. The few who can afford satellite TV have lost the local stations they used to rely on for their major news source. Some of the lucky ones have one or two channels left from the four they had before the conversion. A very few have two or three. Most have none. And with broadband unavailable, dialup limited to 14.4k due to telco filtering, no cell signal, and landlines with dialup topping $50 a month, getting information is becoming increasingly difficult.
I'm not saying the conversion was a bad thing, it will certainly open up vast new opportunities for communications. It is a shame, however, that the very people who gave up their old information sources are those who will not be able to take advantage of the new ones that replace them. AT&T/Verizon/Sprint are NEVER going to put WiMax in deeply rural areas, and even if they did many of the people who have lost access to TV could never afford it anyway.
I fear the same will happen with telephone if AT&T gets its way. I realize it's difficult to cost-justify getting information out to rural areas, but at least leave them a phone line.
People will die (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:VOIP sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
When I moved to where I lived I had POTS go down 3 times due to storms. The last time, a lightning strike near my house (I live in Florida) really jacked it up. Through it all my internet was available. That's what convinced me to make the jump. Since I did switch, I've never had it go down.
If my power drops, or my VOIP isn't working for any reason, the calls to my home phone are forwarded to our cell phones. And we can still call out on those until power comes back.
If our cell phones don't work - then as you have said, there are bigger problems to worry about.
But really, I don't need the VOIP either except as I mentioned, I worry about my kids reliably dialing 911 on a cell phone. Once they are old enough to do that VOIP goes too.
I've found cell phones to be dependable enough for my needs. Google Voice pretty much clears up the few shortcoming there.
There is one problem I don't think you see. The way a cell phone works is that it communicates with a cell tower, that cell tower uses phone lines at some point to route your call. If everything goes to a VOIP based phone system and the power goes out, there is a pretty good chance you will lose your cell phone as well. Currently this doesn't happen because the phone lines carry their own power, so the ones hooked into your cell tower are still up. With a VOIP network, when the power goes out, so does your cell phone.
Not really cutting landlines (Score:3, Insightful)
The FCC Public Notice (TFA refers to a Notice of Inquiry, but links to a Public Notice soliciting comments as to whether the FCC should issue of a Notice of Inquiry) isn't about cutting "landlines", its about replacing PSTN with IP as the implementation technology for telephone service.
But the concern you raise is valid even in that context; issues like usefulness in emergencies (both in terms of 911 service and resilience to power failures and other sources of outages) are things that would no doubt be significant areas if the FCC's investigation of such a transition moves forward -- which I fully expect it to.
The context of the FCC Public Notice is about the transition in the context of the Congressional mandate for the FCC to provide guidance on acheiving universal broadband access and utilization, and transitioning the phone system to IP so that the IP network is the single universal communication network that has to be maintained would make sense as a means of doing that.
Of course, that does raise the question of the kind of common carrier provisions that have applied to the providers of access to the PSTN network because it is the nation's principal universal communication system and frequently and naturally (because of the infrastructure requirements) the subject of regional monopolies, but not (though they are often the same providers) to the providers of IP access.
Re:VOIP sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:VOIP sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people don't have a choice. You suck it up, and do what it takes to survive. That or you die. When you are in a hole like that, its very hard to get out.
If you cut off analog telephone access to the rural poor, you add yet another hurdle between them and the things they need in order to survive or advance themselves.
POTS infrastructure part of the solution (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't really see AT&Ts reasoning. The fact is copper line wire pretty much runs everywhere, and by adding some DSL line extenders, much of this could be reused for providing DSL service everywhere for relatively little cost, compared to having to build new networks. So POTS infrastructure can be used to help bring broadband to rural areas relatively cheaply reusing much of the existing infrastructure. Wireless tends to be expensive and slow. due to the limited bandwidth, simply due to the fact everyone in an area is sharing that bandwidth. DSL could probably offer cheaper and faster service more reliably.
Re:Please Be Precise! (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's how you choose to read AT&T's request... I see:
M. FCC chairman, landlines for consumers make us no money, yet we are legally required to supply them. Can you please make them optional for us? Oh and we'd like not to have to supply fiber-to-the-home at anything less than 10 times the price kthxbai.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
The US never made it to ISDN (Score:5, Insightful)
In parts of Europe, voice phone service has been digital for a decade or more, using ISDN. ISDN voice is 64Kb/s uncompressed, so you get digital audio for the last mile in the same format as the rest of the phone network, and with no packetization lag. ISDN was supposed to take voice digital. Unfortunately, US phone companies took it as an opportunity to switch from flat-rate local call pricing to per-minute pricing, so it never went anywhere.
The US did ISDN power wrong - Europe provides power over ISDN, but the US does not. So ISDN home equipment remains powered up as long as the central office has power. (There's a cute trick with ISDN power - normally, it's one DC polarity, and you can draw a fair amount of power, enough to run answering machines, wireless base stations, and ISDN phone displays. In emergencies, the central office reverses the DC polarity and lowers the current limit. You can still make calls, but the accessories power down.) Germany, Switzerland, and Denmark are about 1/3 voice ISDN.
Here are some modern ISDN phones. [gigaset.com] They have nice features, like a running display of call cost and SMS capability. ISDN and DSL can be run on the same wire pair, so using ISDN for voice and DSL for data works.
Re:Some other roadblocks (Score:4, Insightful)
Since the context here is the FCC taking the first step in exploring policy for a switch from PSTN to IP-based networks as the basis for the nation's primary, universally accessible communication network, while one should certainly demand that the FCC require, as part of that policy, that the IP network have the same uptime requirement that applies to the PSTN network it is replacing, I don't think it makes sense -- in that context -- to view the difference in current regulatory requirements for reliability as an intrinsic difference between the technologies.
Re:Never sacrifice proven infrastructure (Score:3, Insightful)
Still sounds like a rip-off. I just pay a specialized VoIP provider, such as unlimitel.ca or voip.ms, for a "by the minute" SIP/IAX2 account. It has a 3.50$/month base fee and 1.1cent/minute for north-american calls. Our monthly bill is rarely more than 10$/month. It also gives us reasonnable rates for calling Europe (2-3cents/minute). Call quality is always good (although that will mostly depend on your broadband connection). Stuff like caller-id, multiple concurrent calls, etc. are included. You can also change your outgoing caller-id, so that if you work from home, your clients will not notice. There is a good choice of VoIP providers, and you can use many providers at once.
For incoming calls, we also have a DID in a european country (where my wife has family) that costs us a 8$/month flat fee (unlimited) from didww.com. This allows family to call us by making a local call (good for the grand-parents). We also have a north american 1-800 number for when we have do to calls from a public phone booth (which you can find in every metro station, while waiting for the train). The 1-800 is 4cent/min, so it is usually cheaper to make short calls than the 50cent/call that Bell charges. Using Asterisk, we have special codes to reroute calls from a phone booth to do outgoing calls, so that if we are outside home, we can easily make a call to either home, or elsewhere, for just a few cents (ever had to call Australia, while waiting for the metro?).
Finally, as people migrate to VoIP systems using Asterisk, we route calls between us directly (p2p SIP), so that there is no fee to call each other. Also works well with mobile devices such as Nokia n800/n900.
Anyway, VoIP can be a great thing. But as geeks, this is one thing that most of us can easily learn and extend. We should never depend on large carriers for VoIP, since if they can get another penny by making yet-another-marketing-scam, they will.
Re:VOIP sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
The rest of your question is based on a situation that will have ceased to exist by the time I drop VOIP.
Great, 50 to 300 meter accuracy in 2D. So helpful when you are dying on the floor in a high-rise apartment building and paramedics are breaking all doors to figure out where the heck you are.
Usage monitoring (Score:3, Insightful)
Did AT&T ever provide a web page that allows you to monitor usage so that you could cut back if it looks like you are about to go over the limit?
If they haven't, then people need to start getting their local politicians to demand it.
Re:VOIP sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I think it would be better if we encouraged people to live a bit closer together rather than subsidize people who want a log cabin lifestyle with an urban center connection.
Then who would grow the food that you eat?
Re:Isnt it ironic ? they are the ones withholding (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm of the opinion that municipalities should own utilities. Here in Springfield the city owns the electric company, and we have the cheapest and most dependable power in the state. The power company actually turns a profit as well, selling excess power to private utilities in surrounding communities. Meanwhile, the poor folks who have Amerin have crappy service, abysmal customer service, and high prices.
The reason is that unlike most businesses, you can't shop around for a utility; it's not like you can go down the street and get a competing electric company. Corporations are beholden to stockholders, and in most businesses that means they have to be beholden to their customers as well. An electric company doesn't have this "problem"; you're stuck with them.
As Lilly Tomlin's character "Ernestine the telephone operator" always said, "We're the phone company. We don't HAVE to."
The electric company here IS beholden to their customers, who vote in local elections. If the electric service gets bad, the mayor loses his job. In effect, the customers are also the stockholders.
To the folks you mention yelling "socialism" I say, how are you with those socialist roads, police, and fire departments? Some things should be free market, but when there is no free market (like electricity or other wired/piped infrastructure, roads etc.), government should own it.
Re:VOIP sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait - you think currently cell towers will operate if they have no electricity running to them? EVEN IF the phone line to the cell tower is still up, that doesn't matter if the tower has no power - they need electricity to communicate with your phone! The benefit of a cell phone is not that the tower doesn't need power - because it most certainly does. The benefit is that there's no fixed line from the tower to your phone to get taken out. And the phone has a battery, so if your power is out, you can still call. If the power's out to the cell tower - well, that's the same as power being out to the local POTS exchange. Doesn't matter if the cell tower is connecting to VOIP, POTS, or another cell tower - if it doesn't have power, you're phone ain't gonna work.
VoIP gave people choice, and they chose. (Score:4, Insightful)
ATT whines about people leaving for alternative services as if it were inevitable. I don't think it was.
VoIP gave people alternatives to being gouged $25 or $30 a month for just *dialtone*, and people chose. I have a T-Mobile prepaid cell phone and I pay less than that *per year* for the 'dialtone' component.
I'd pay $100/year for a wired circuit and dialtone, but that kind of money just isn't enough for the likes of AT&T.
A.
(who has been off the PSTN for a long, long time)
I'd go for that... (Score:2, Insightful)
...as long as it is a fair trade, rural versus heavy urban. I'll take no broadband while living in the log cabin because it doesn't exist out in the sticks as long as the big cities, those folks living in a more "sensible" heavily packed high rise apartment means they get no food, because it doesn't exist there and has to be trucked in, which we will cut out then.
Fair enough? You keep your 50 meg down high speed connection, we keep the food, seems totally fair to me, no reason to push one product or the other one way or the other when it doesn't exist there, just let folks live with what they have locally and be done with it. No need for commie subsidized and shared roads, nor commie subsidized and shared wires on poles then, everyone is happy, no urbanite pays for anything from or for the rural areas, no rural folks pay for anything from or for the urban areas. Even steven, complete split there. You got yours, we got ours, no one pays for the other guy's life in any manner.
err..good luck man, hope you like those tasty electrons....
Re:Great idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
You're spot on DrJimbo. Lots of TVs went dark in my home town. Lots of TVs went to the dump too. So much for going green. The unemployed and underemployed can't afford fancy new TVs or the expensive services.
We have POTS and DSL. It has been very reliable. I like the small, independent DSL provider we have. Capable local techs answer the phone on the rare occasion we lose connectivity and it's usually the phone company's problem anyway, not the ISP.
POTS is such a simple mature technology, there's little they can screw up. There's also not much they can overcharge for.
It's no surprise AT&T wants to do away with this so they can gouge me for lousy service and a more restrictive TOS.
Re:VOIP sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Name a problem with VoIP, and there are people who will find a solution, assuming we're willing to invest in infrastructure.
Sure: In an emergency can I cobble together something to send out a communication that doesn't involve me fabricating a processor? Give me a bundle of random parts and a headphone or two and I can create an analog phone out of it in an hour or so. VoIP relies on too many technologies to be easily "recreateable" in the event of a major disaster. Prior to IC's there was little that couldn't be recreated in the event of a long-term power outage or major (EMP-like) disruption to society.
For any infrastructure, there should be at least the possibility of a contingency plan that could operate using 1940's technology... ideally with a fail-safe involved as well. Anything else is bound to come back to haunt us sooner or later.
Re:VOIP sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
You are right, but for the wrong reasons. Competition is the reason AT&T wants this. They are required, by law, to share lines with competitors. If they build it out, someone else can come along and rent it at city rates, and they will lose money on the line. If it's a data service, not a regulated telecommunications service, then they don't have to share. If they upgrade it, no one else can ever use it. The reason AT&T doesn't build out is that they are afraid of competition. The reason they want this is to eliminate competition. The theory is they would then do a bigger better buildout for the rural areas, but I expect it to not work that way in reality. They just want the benefits of the pure monopoly they had before 1996.